1. Helping people find their voice: 00:19

One of my friends scoffs at Toastmasters, but moments like this make
it definitely worthwhile.

Today one of the members brought his girlfriend to listen to his first
speech. The girl was painfully shy and clearly terrified of public
speaking, even during the Table Topics and guest comments section.

She approached me afterwards, though. And oh, the stories I could see
inside her... CN Tower Stair Climb T-shirt, colored bands around her
wrists: these are the marks of someone who cares deeply about some
things. I listened to her fears and shared my own experience learning
how to speak - at first starting out because I couldn't stop talking
about technology and I wanted to get into conferences for free, and
then realizing how much fun it was to help people learn. I told her
that the real trick to speaking in front of an audience - or at least
in front of Toastmasters - is to speak to them one person at a time,
treating them as your friends.

Most of all, I looked into her eyes and told her in many different
ways that she had stories worth telling.

When I felt her tentatively reaching out, I closed the loop and we
hugged. The hug was one of the best I've ever had, and her thank you
one of the sweetest.

This is what I live for: that deep connection, that chance to help
people find their voice.

2. Grill time!: 00:51

Toastmasters from 6 to 8 means I usually can't meet anyone for dinner
on Tuesdays, which is why I was surprised to get a call from Trevor at
8:30 or so. He invited me to a barbecue with Brian. The Kensington
market I usually go to for meat had closed already and I didn't feel
like chancing Chinatown. I also didn't want to walk to Dominion and
being even _more_ late. Fortunately, I had some hamburger patties in
the freezer. Hooray for the well-stocked pantry!

Although the weather was a bit cold (it snowed a little bit today!
argh!), standing around in a coat and chatting with friends was worth
it. I defrosted the patties in a microwave, put one away, and grilled
the other patty under the guidance of Brian and Trevor. The potatoes I
wrapped in foil and started grilling were nowhere near done by the
time the burgers, porkchop and steak were done, so I took the potatoes
off the grill. Brian thoughtfully anticipated that and included me in
his calculations for rice. Awwww. =) (The man cooks rice with a pot!
_Proper_ rice, too, not instant rice! Coolness. =) )

Keynan dropped by with a platter of chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.
She found the cookie recipe on the Net. I wonder if I can share
Kathy's Top Secret Cookie Recipe with her - but then it wouldn't be
Top Secret, would it?

I washed a number of their dishes to thank them for hosting me and
teaching me how to grill, following the strange rules of my
dinner-party etiquette. Also, it's kinda fun. Eventually Trevor took
the sponge away from me and put it on the other side of the room.
Spoilsport.

Keynan brought a DVD of Terminator. I finally got to watch the thing.
=)

After the movie, Brian pulled a scary face to stop me from finishing
the rest of their dishes. I couldn't help but laugh, which made him
laugh, and then no amount of coaxing could get him to do the scary
face again.

3. On tutoring: 01:41

This set of instructions for the tutor to take into account when
tutoring is very helpful and lets the tutor know that it is not all
about lecturing the student in the session. The student should speak
more and the tutor should let the tutee set the agenda, this is how
the tutee will really learn the subject matter. Also the tutor must
keep a positive attitude so that the tutee stays positive about the
subject and does not just give up. I chose this list because it is
more descriptive than the first list, and it is more of an agenda
helper while the last list was overall ideas that should come natural
to the tutor.

I can use this list because it entails that the tutor will carry out
these tasks so that the tutee is comfortable working with me. I think
it is important for every new tutor to know that this is very
important. You want to make the student feel welcome in the tutoring
center, and you want to feel comfortable and personal in a session.

I would remove the parts that mention reading/writing because I am a
math tutor, but overall this is a great list that every tutor can use.

Random Japanese sentence: Ａ ｓｐｏｔ ｏｆ ｓｈｕｔ−ｅｙｅ は、また猫のいねむりともいわれている。猫は１度に２〜３分しか寝ない癖があるからだ。 "A spot of shut-eye" is also called a cat nap because a cat is in the habit of sleeping only a few minutes at a time.

An investigation into new approaches to design research, with an
emphasis on human-centred design research, set within the context of
emerging needs, technologies and forms of the 21st century.

Brenda Laurel is an acclaimed designer, researcher and writer, with a
25-year career in human-computer interaction (HCI) and expertise in
interactive narrative and cultural aspects of technology. One of the
founders of Interval Research Corporation in Palo Alto, California,
Laurel conducted research into gender and technology, co-produced and
directed the Placeholder Virtual Reality project, and co-founded
Purple Moon a subsidiary acquired by Mattel in 1999. She serves
currently as Chair and faculty member of the graduate Media Design
program at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California,
and concurrently works as Senior Director and Distinguished Engineer
at Sun Microsystems Labs in Menlo Park, California. Laurel has
published extensively on interactive fiction, computer games,
autonomous agents, virtual relation and political artistic issues in
interactive media. She is editor of The Art of Human-Computer
Interface Design [Addison-Wesley 1990] and author of Computers as
Theatre [Addison-Wesley 1991].

Both presentations take place at OCAD's Auditorium (Room 190), Nora
E. Vaughan Wing, 100 McCaul Street, Toronto. All are welcome to
attend, and admission is free. For information, visit www.ocad.ca or
call 416-977-6000.

6. Tagging people: 23:16

Boundary studies are nice for figuring out where something doesn't
work and why it doesn't work. I've been thinking about where tagging
and folksonomies break down for my FIS paper. Some of the cases I've
been looking at involve web services where you tag people.

Tagalag is a no-frills system for tagging
people. It doesn't really offer anything in the way of immediate
personal incentive. In fact, the only thing you can do with it aside
from tagging people (e-mail address required) is put your XML feeds
together in an OPML list for easy aggregation. Very bare, and very few
users.

43people allows users to track whom
they've met and whom they want to meet. Popular tags include
occupation, gender, nationality, and location. Tags are also used to
describe characteristics such as "funny", "glasses", and "brilliant".
This shows tagging as a clear faceted classification. "Find people
also tagged with..." makes it easier for people to search for
interesting combinations, and you can narrow the search to the current
city. Usual problems with keywords: "smart" vs "intelligent", etc.
Particular problem: funny vs hilarious, relativity.

Consumating is the weirdest. It's a
dating site with a much broader audience than the other two sites, and
you can tell that from the tags. The most popular tags follow the tag
profile of 43people, but the recent tags look like one-off tags used
for communication. That said, Consumating makes good use of tags in
conjunction with polls, prompting people to keep refining their
profile every week.

So: tagging other people is still a bit weird, but shows a bit of the
folksonomic piles-of-leaves flattened faceted classification. Tagging
one's self, on the other hand, is more of self-expression, ad guiding
it with questions is pretty effective.

I'd love to hear about any questions, comments, suggestions or links that you might have. Your comments will not be posted on this website immediately, but will be e-mailed to me first. You can use this form to get in touch with me, or e-mail me at [email protected] .

Page: 2006.04.05

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